"More free from peril than the envious Court? THE RECES S, &c. PART III. FROM this temporary death I was at ་ laft recalled by a found that made me wish it had been indeed eternal; the voice, the tremendous voice of Williams. Of what horrors was my foul inftantly fufceptible! What dreadful images fwam before those eyes I hardly durft open! Fearfully at length I caft them around-I faw I had been conveyed into the great room of our Recefs; facred once to piety and innocence, but now, alas! the thelter of rapine, perhaps of murder. A number of VOL. II. B ill God, you fee, moft graciously has fent you." 86 Blafpheme not thy Maker, oh cruel wretch, fighed I in a tremulous accent; juft, though fevere, are all his ordinations; and lo, with fad fubmiffion, I take the death appointed me even from thy hands." "No, cried he, though you are not the haughty beauty I adored, yet, as the wife of that imperious lord, you become but a more perfect means of exquifite revenge." The nature of that revenge blazed in his countenance-my heart turned to marble within me. I raised my eyes towards heaven in fpeechlefs agony, then rivetting them on Lord Leicester, found life recede too faft, for my ear to diftin-" guifh one word of that bitter indignation, which the voice it loved fo loudly uttered. I almost doubted whether my fenfes were indeed returned, when I found myself involved in impenetrable darkness. The piercing figh of fome one near me was the only found that broke the ftillness of the night. If, cried I in a feeble tone, that is the voice to which my heart was born to vibrate, oh tell me, beloved Leicester, whether the scene which yet fwims before my fight was real or a vifion?” "Gracious heaven! returned he in a voice yet more piercing, you breathe again, my foul's best treasure! the long, long fainting caufed by the threats of that execrable monfter, and which held during your removal into this dungeon, gave me hopes that you had finally escaped a fate too horrid for reflection. O dire extreme of defpair and mifery when I am condemned to wish you dead! and yet what else can deliver you?-yet think not, Matilda, I fear to follow ;-ah no! the best blood burning in this bofom should joyfully embalm you; but the thoughts of all which may precede that moment, almost urges me to dafh my distracted brain against the stones on which I lie, and fhorten my own fufferings, fince hopeless of averting yours." "Call up your fortitude, your reafon, your religion, returned I in a firmer voice; (an emotion which united all those fentiments diffufing itfelf through my frame) dare I accufe the Almighty of inB 2 juftice? |